Selma, a Czech immigrant on the verge of blindness, struggles to make ends meet for herself and her son, who has inherited the same genetic disorder and will suffer the same fate without an expensive operation. When life gets too difficult, Selma learns to cope through her love of musicals, dreaming up little numbers to the rhythmic beats of her surroundings.
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Björk
Selma Jezkova
Catherine Deneuve
Kathy
David Morse
Bill Houston
Peter Stormare
Jeff
Joel Grey
Oldrich Novy
Cara Seymour
Linda Houston
Vladica Kostic
Gene Jezkova
Jean-Marc Barr
Norman
Vincent Paterson
Samuel
Siobhan Fallon Hogan
Brenda
Director
Lars von Trier
Tagline
"In a world of shadows, she found the light of life."
Status
Released
Original Language
EN
Budget
$12,500,000
Revenue
$40,061,153
Production
Zentropa Entertainments, DR, SVT Drama, ARTE, France 3 Cinéma, Blind Spot Pictures, Liberator Productions, Íslenska kvikmyndasamsteypan, Pain Unlimited Filmproduktion, Trust Film Svenska, Cinematograph, What Else?, ARTE France Cinéma, Film i Väst, WDR
FrontrunnerParis
December 31, 2020
Dazzling Björk in this indictment against the death sentence, in tight close-ups. This film is a UFO, musical without being.
badelf
October 31, 2025
I have tremendous respect for Lars von Trier's work, and I deeply admire his courage in attempting to fuse drama with musical theater. "Dancer in the Dark" is nothing if not audacious. Unfortunately, ambition alone doesn't make a successful film, and this one fails both as a drama and as a musical. As drama, the film stumbles on two fundamental levels. First, the handheld, shaky camera movement...
CinemaSerf
December 4, 2025
You get a clue as to the slightly surreal nature of the drama right from a start that sees Björk and Catherine Deneuve doing their own amateur dramatics rehearsals of “The Sound of Music”! It turns out that the former, “Selma”, is a Czech immigrant to the USA who is suffering from a progressive blindness that she has passed on to her young son. She knows that he still has time to have corrective s...
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